Conflicts in professional concern and the exclusion of pupils with SEMH in England

ABSTRACT

Pupils with Social Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs are disproportionately excluded from schools in England. Drawing on data collected from interviews with Local Authority Education Officers in 2017/18 in a project that looked at disparities in rates of permanent exclusion across the UK, this article explores how the influence of perverse incentives in the system, as well as the potentially different primary concerns of actors involved in inter-professional work, may undermine practices of inclusion in schools, and lead to the exclusion of pupils with SEMH. The review of existing literature and current analysis presented in this article highlight a number of potential factors which may be leading to the exclusion of pupils with SEMH in England. The data analysis and proposed theoretical frameworks contribute to the knowledge on ways in which the fragmentation of the English school system has failed many SEMH learners. Our argument here is that professional communication to support pupils with SEMH requires inter-professional understanding and respect for the primary concerns of different agencies. However, in circumstances of challenge and limited resources, there is a heightened risk that pupils with SEMH can become collateral casualties of policy change evacuated to the social margins of schooling.

KEYWORDS:

• School exclusion
• pupils with SEMH
• inter-professional work

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge Ted Cole who collected and collated the data for this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Fixed period exclusion refers to when a pupil is temporarily removed from school. Permanent exclusion refers to when a pupil is prohibited from returning and they are removed from the school register (DfE 2017).

2. ‘SEN support’ outlines the help given to individuals with SEN in a school. An EHCP is a plan of care for children and young people aged up to 25 who have more complex needs.

3. High needs funding covers pupils with SEND and those in Alternative Provision settings. It is provided to local authorities through the high needs block of the dedicated schools grant.

4. ‘Each local authority is required to have a fair access protocol, which directs how they handle admissions outside of the normal admission rounds. The protocol must be agreed by a majority of schools and are binding for all schools within the local authority area. It is intended to ensure that children, particularly the most vulnerable, are offered a school place quickly. This includes pupils who have been excluded from school. Local authorities often coordinate the placement of pupils in partnership with local schools through a regular meeting, commonly referred to as a “fair access panel”’ (Partridge et al. 2020:9).

Additional information

Funding

John Fell Fund 162/092

Notes on contributors

Ian Thompson

Ian Thompson is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on social justice in education including the effects of poverty and social class, collaborative learning, and school exclusion. He is a co-Principal Investigator on the ESRC funded project Excluded Lives: The Political Economies of School Exclusion and their Consequences.

Alice Tawell

Alice Tawell is a DPhil candidate at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the enactment of school exclusion policy in England. She is a Co-Investigator on the ESRC funded project Excluded Lives: The Political Economies of School Exclusion and their Consequences.

Harry Daniels

Harry Daniels is Professor of Education at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the fields of special educational needs, collaborative learning, multiagency working, school design, and school exclusion. He is a co-Principal Investigator on the ESRC funded project Excluded Lives: The Political Economies of School Exclusion and their consequences.